iOS 5 and iCloud share same release date, Oct 12

We are doing our best to keep you up-to-date with all the iPhone-related news which was revealed at Apple’s media event today, earlier we confirmed that Sprint was getting the 4S, asked you whether you were disappointed by the 5th-gen iPhone’s specs / design and told you how iOS 5 would bring AirPlay Mirroring to iPhone 4S / 4 / 3GS – now we have some important news regarding what Apple will be doing on October 12th.

Apple’s next operating system version, iOS 5, will go live on this date, also on the same date Apple’s online storage service, iCloud, will launch. You can find out lots of juciy details about what iOS 5 here and iCloud here – obviously Android devices have boasted similar features for a long time, but Apple usually deliver things in a much more seemless and reliable way.

iOS 5 should silence lots of Apple critics as it consists of hundreds of innovative features which iPhone owners have been requesting for years, one of which is the notification centre which Android smartphones have boasted for a long time now – you can see a video showing this off here.

One additional feature which iOS 5 and iCloud will allow for is iTunes Matching (available late October), this will cost $24.99 a year and will store your iTunes library on the Cloud, this means that once your iTunes account has been set up on an Apple device it will scan and match your library, update what’s missing, intelligently sort the media and all new media will be immediately ready to stream, best of all even if your original copy was of low quality it will stream from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality.

With iOS 5 and the iCloud in place from October 12 it will be interesting to see how Apple build from here, perhaps in the future there will be seemless integration between all Apple devices, meaning your SMS messages, emails, contacts, photos, music, videos and other files are instantly accessible no-matter whether you are using your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, iMac or MacBook – this seems to be what Apple are working towards.